I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately, for various reasons, so here’s a post that should be about what I read last week but is actually about the (alarmingly) few things I’ve read since mid-October. (Honestly, I need to stop playing Star Trek: Timelines so much. And procrastinating because I haven’t got any images ready. That would help too. Oh, and I could probably give reading fan-fiction a miss for a little while…)

The new camp counselor, Seafarin’ Karen breathes some fresh life into this volume of Lumberjanes, but her presence is (sadly) short-lived. I’m so-so on Lumberjanes at the moment, I must admit. I loved the first few volumes but five and six have been a bit more hit and miss. Still, the girls themselves remain awesome and there are wormholes in this one, which is always a plus.

Over on my Instagram account, I captioned a picture of this book with the following: “A low-key yet incredibly disturbing read.” And I really can’t think of a better way to sum it up. Harry and Michel are guards in a luxury block of apartments that can only be accessed via the basement. They receive food drops from ‘the Organisation’ and otherwise have no contact with the outside world. First there is a mass exodus of residents, next their food drops become irregular, and then there is the third guard… The Guard is a carefully controlled book, passive, almost, in its telling. There are no hysterics or dramatic revelations and yet things get dark, people, they get really, really dark. It’s not a book for everyone, but it’s stuck with me, which I think is often the sign of something worth reading.

Go read this book! Honestly, you won’t regret it. It’s informative and charming and powerful, and definitely worth your time. My favourite thing about A History of Britain in 21 Women is how personal a book it is. These are 21 women who changed Britain, yes, but they’re also 21 women who made a deep impression on Jenni Murray herself. She doesn’t always agree with what they did or what they stood for, but her appreciation for their determination and strength is a deep and inspiring thing. To my surprise, there’s a chapter about Constance Markievicz, a leading figure in the 1916 Rising in Ireland, and the first woman to be elected to British parliament (as I have mentioned on this blog before, she did not take her seat). I was delighted to see her included, and also to see reference to the Sligo Women’s Suffrage Society (hup the women!), but dismayed at Murray’s pronunciation of Irish names, words and placenames (I listened to the audiobook). I mean, I laughed because they were ridiculous at time, but it can’t be that find to find someone to give you the correct pronunciation of common phrases and names, can it? Murray also had a lamentable habit of putting on accents, a quirk which was completely distracting during her chapters on Nancy Astor and Nicola Sturgeon (I mean, she didn’t even come close to the type of accent Nicola Sturgeon has!). These audio oddities aside, nothing can take away from the power of this passionate and articulate book.

On his way home from work one day, our protagonist gets out of his car, currently stuck in a traffic jam, and decides to run home because, and I’m not kidding, once when he was at University, he ran a marathon without training even a little bit. That really should have been a warning to me that I was not going to enjoy this book. Thirst is ostensibly about what happens to a community when all natural water disappears without warning (or explanation. The best we get is that maybe it ‘burned’). You’ll be shocked to hear that what happens is that everyone turns on each other and things get dark really fast. Eddie, for example, decides to rob his elderly neighbour while pretending to check she’s okay, not that he cares if she’s okay it’s just that his wife might and he wants to impress her. I think we’re supposed to point to the stressful set of circumstances as the reason for Eddie being a massive arsehole, but, honestly, it seems like he was an arsehole to begin with. The text is littered with references to Eddie trying to socially isolate his wife, and being a general dickhead to everyone around him, so, no, I didn’t find him sympathetic, I didn’t enjoy reading about him, and I think that a lot of what happened was actually his fault in the first place because he’s a massively self-involved, self-impressed wanker.

I can’t praise this adaptation enough. The cast are all spirited and sympathetic (one of the things that bugs me about the movie is how poorly Victoria Forrester comes across when, actually, she’s just a bit flighty), the narration is warm and amusing, the music is sparse yet perfectly used… Yeah, a pretty perfect adaptation, I have to say. Definitely recommended for fans of the book.

This book unfolds itself slowly, beautifully and heart-wrenchingly. The story of Thaniel, a clerk in the Home Office, Mori, a Japanese watchmaker, and an Irish Republican bombing campaign (sort of), it is quiet, complicated and wonderful. Steampunk meets detective story meets romance meets sci-fi meets fantasy meets magical realism meets historical fiction meets ‘hey! Foreigners and women are people too!’. There’s so much I want to say about The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but my biggest enjoyment came from not knowing key elements in advance. Read carefully and closely, pay attention, and this book will reward you tenfold. Oh, and there’s a clockwork octopus. If that doesn’t interest you, I don’t know what will. (I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THE ENDING SO I NEED SOMEONE TO FLAIL ABOUT IT TO!)

I had grand plans for this Sci-Fi Month and I have utterly, utterly failed to carry them out. So, as a last gasp effort, I looked at my recent reading for inspiration. As it turns out, without quite meaning to, I’ve ended up reading two climate change-related sci-fi novels back to back this month. As a genre, ‘cli-fi’ (ew) is very much in vogue so here are ten reads to get you started if you haven’t already dipped your toe into the apocalyptic waters, so to speak.

Rising Waters

In a post-war, post-crash, post-disaster, post-everything world, the environmental-action trawler Kapital scours the earth’s oceans for its mysteriously missing sistership, The Massive. Captain Callum Israel, a man who has dedicated his life to the ocean, now must ask himself—as our planet dies—what it means to be an environmentalist after the world’s ended. Callum and his crew will come up against pirates, rebels, murderers, and thieves as they struggle to remain noble toward their cause. Can you save a planet that’s already doomed?

Conspiracies abound in this gripping graphic novel series where fresh water is a luxury item and no one is quite what they seem.

In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off from the rest of the world. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children, the only hope for the future, are a rare commodity.

For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. She’s safe, happy enough. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. At first he’s a welcome addition, his magnetism drawing the Polanskis out of their shells, promising an alternative to a lonely existence. But Roza can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to Aashay than he’s letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble? Is it true that children are being kidnapped? And what will it cost to find out?

A dark story with an oddly light tone that serves to make it all the more sinister.

Lalla has grown up sheltered from the chaos amid the ruins of civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside. People are killing each other for husks of bread, and the police are detaining anyone without an identification card. On her sixteenth birthday, Lalla’s father decides it’s time to use their escape route–a ship he’s built that is only big enough to save five hundred people.

But the utopia her father has created isn’t everything it appears. There’s more food than anyone can eat, but nothing grows; more clothes than anyone can wear, but no way to mend them; and no-one can tell her where they are going.

A dark and disturbing version of London as seen through the eyes of a sheltered teenager (thus the tone of the book itself is not dark and disturbing).

Endless Snow

It’s November of 2020, and the world is freezing over, each day colder than the last. There’s snow in Israel; the Thames is overflowing; and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to drift just off the coast of Scotland. As ice water melts into the Atlantic, frenzied London residents evacuate by the thousands for warmer temperatures down south–but not Dylan. Grieving and ready to build life anew, he heads north to bury his mother’s and grandmother’s ashes on the Scottish islands where they once lived.

Hundreds of miles away, twelve-year-old Estella and her survivalist mother, Constance, scrape by in the snowy, mountainous Highlands, preparing for a record-breaking winter. Living out of a caravan, they spend their days digging through landfills, searching for anything with restorative and trading value. When Dylan arrives in their caravan park in the middle of the night, life changes course for Estella and Constance. Though the weather worsens, his presence brings a new light to daily life, and when the ultimate disaster finally strikes, they’ll all be ready.

A quiet, calm novel that puts the T from LGBT at the core of an intimate story about the end of the world.

The snow doesn’t stop. It falls and falls and falls. Until it lies three miles thick across the whole of the Earth. Six billion people have died. A few thousand survive. But those few thousand need help, they need support, they need organising, governing. And so the lies begin.

Coursing through an eternal winter, on an icy track wrapped around the frozen planet Earth, there travels a train that never stops. This is Snowpiercer: one thousand and one carriages long. The last bastion of human civilization. Or is it?

A second train also travels through the snow on the same track, its inhabitants living in constant fear of crashing into the first Snowpiercer. And from this second train, a small group of scavenging explorers now emerges, risking their lives in the deadly cold…

I can’t tell you how bad I think these comics are, but they are really flipping well reviewed by everyone who isn’t me! I love the idea, but hate the execution.

Toxic Conditions/Nuclear Fallout

They don’t believe it at first. Crowded in Zach’s kitchen, Ruby and the rest of the partygoers laugh at Zach’s parents’ frenzied push to get them all inside as it starts to drizzle. But then the radio comes on with the warning, “It’s in the rain! It’s fatal, it’s contagious, and there’s no cure.”

Two weeks later, Ruby is alone. Anyone who’s been touched by rain or washed their hands with tap water is dead. The only drinkable water is quickly running out. Ruby’s only chance for survival is a treacherous hike across the country to find her father-if he’s even still alive.

I really struggled with the main character in this, but I can’t deny how chilling the premise of the book is.

Thousands of them have lived underground. They’ve lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Or you’ll get what you wish for.

The first book in this trilogy is one of my best library finds from the last few years. Read it – you won’t be disappointed.

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct and the half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind, but the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory.

Man has handed over stewardship of the Earth to new life-forms. Mutated by radiation, they are better adapted to the new world. A few score thousand survivors live on, not knowing whether they are the only ones left on Earth, living in the Moscow Metrothe biggest air-raid shelter ever built. Stations have become mini-statelets, their people uniting around ideas, religions, water-filters, or the need to repulse enemy incursion.

VDNKh is the northernmost inhabited station on its line, one of the Metro’s best stations and secure. But a new and terrible threat has appeared. Artyom, a young man living in VDNKh, is given the task of penetrating to the heart of the Metro to alert everyone to the danger and to get help. He holds the future of his station in his hands, the whole Metroand maybe the whole of humanity.

I’ve actually only read Metro 2033, but I’ll get around to the others one day. She said optimistically.

Drought

On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the stream bed is gone. Something is very wrong. When he arrives home, the power is out and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry. Eddie and his wife, Laura, find themselves thrust together with their neighbours while a sense of unease thickens in the stifling night air.

Thirst takes place in the immediate aftermath of a mysterious disaster – the Chapmans and their neighbours suffer the effects of the heat, their thirst, and the terrifying realisation that no one may be coming to help. As violence rips through the community, Eddie and Laura are forced to recall secrets from their past and question their present humanity. In crisp and convincing prose, Ben Warner compels readers to do the same. What might you do to survive?

Another missed opportunity, in my opinion, with a poorly-explored but solid premise.

The Struggle for Catalonia: Rebel Politics in Spain – Raphael Minder. Events in Catalonia at the moment have made me unspeakably angry, as have the UK’s response to them (hang on, I don’t know what Ireland’s response was… upon googling, it’s very slightly better but not by much), but I realise there’s a lot I don’t understand about what’s happening over there.

Brave Enough to be Angry. Female anger exists so let’s stop pretending it doesn’t (sidenote: watch Fleabag to immerse yourself in the story of a woman absolutely brimming over with rage in a way that few female characters are allowed to be).

This classic of science (and mathematical) fiction — charmingly illustrated by author — describes the journeys of A. Square and his adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions). A. Square also entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions — a revolutionary idea for which he is banished from Spaceland.

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca of San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.

I received this from my The Broke and the Bookish Secret Santa last year, and it had been on my wishlist since its initial publication. Have I read it yet? Of course not.

They’ve died for the companies more times than they can remember. Now they must fight to live for themselves.

Sentient machines work, fight and die in interstellar exploration and conflict for the benefit of their owners – the competing mining corporations of Earth. But sent over hundreds of light-years, commands are late to arrive and often hard to enforce. The machines must make their own decisions, and make them stick.

With this new found autonomy come new questions about their masters. The robots want answers. The companies would rather see them dead.

The Corporation Wars: Dissidence is an all-action, colorful space opera giving a robot’s-eye view of a robot revolt

I’ve only had this one since last week (I went to an author event where I was lucky enough get my copy signed by Ken MacLeod) so I’m cutting myself some slack on not having read this yet. The problem is that I said that last year about A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers which – you’ve guessed it! – remains unread.

A Handmaid’s Tale for our times, this exhilarating novel pits political oppression against the will to survive, in a nightmarishly believable vision of Britain in the near future.

Following its union with the United States and a series of disastrous foreign wars, Britain is in the grip of a severe crisis; the country is now under the control of The Authority.

But up in the far north of Cumbria, Jackie and a group of fellow rebel women have escaped The Authority’s repressive regime and formed their own militia. Sister, brought to breaking point by the restrictions imposed on her own life, decides to join them. Though her journey is frightening and dangerous, she believes her struggle will soon be over. But Jackie’s single-minded vision for the army means that Sister must decide all over again what freedom is, and whether she is willing to fight for it.

I picked this up at a library book sale in 2011 (!). It’s dystopian, features LGBT relationships AND was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award, so why haven’t I read it yet?

A propulsive science fiction tale of murder and memory, all set on a futuristic space station.

Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo – The City in the Sky – is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals.

Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to until a disassembled corpse is found dancing in the micro-gravity.

In charge of the murder investigation is Nikki “Fix” Freeman, who is not thrilled to have Alice Blake, an uptight government goody-two-shoes, riding shotgun. As the bodies pile up, and the partners are forced to question their own memories, Nikki and Alice begin to realize that gang warfare may not be the only cause for the violence.

Described by the author as a traditional noir novel that happens to be set in space. Sign me up! I picked this up (and got it signed by the author) at the same event as The Corporation Wars: Dissidence, so it’s a new entry to the list.

The Quantum Bomb of 2015 changed everything. The fabric that kept the universe’s different dimensions apart was torn and now, six years later, the people of earth exist in uneasy company with the inhabitants of, amongst others, the elfin, elemental, and demonic realms. Magic is real and can be even more dangerous than technology. Elves are exotic, erotic, dangerous, and really bored with the constant “Lord of the Rings” references. Elementals are a law unto themselves and demons are best left well to themselves.

Special agent Lila Black used to be pretty, but now she’s not so sure. Her body is more than half restless carbon and metal alloy machinery, a machine she’s barely in control of. It goes into combat mode, enough weapons for a small army springing from within itself, at the merest provocation. As for her heart, well, ever since being drawn into a game by the elfin rockstar Zal (lead singer of the No Shows), who she’s been assigned to protect, she’s not even sure she can trust that any more either.

Okay, I only have the first and fourth books in the series, but I’ve had them for aaaaages now and they sound like such a delightful combination of genres (there are negative reviews calling it a romance novel in disguise and, honestly, I’m right into that aspect of it).

When you haven’t had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. If you’re living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn’t. But that’s no consolation to Egon Loeser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like him can’t, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn’t know what year it is; a noir novel that turns all the lights on; a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner; a science fiction novel that can’t remember what ‘isotope’ means; a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.

LET’S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT.

This was really well received, but I can’t lie – I’m mostly in it for the cover.

In Mary’s world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

I have been in love with the name of this series since I first glimpsed the first book on a library shelf. I’ve bought the entire trilogy and yet, and yet, and yet… *sigh*

A chilling dystopian classic crime story from the godfather of Scandinavian crime fiction

In an unnamed country, in an unnamed year sometime in the future, Chief Inspector Jensen of the Sixteenth Division is called in after the publishers controlling the entire country’s newspapers and magazines receive a threat to blow up their building, in retaliation for a murder they are accused of committing. The building is evacuated, but the bomb fails to explode and Jensen is given seven days in which to track down the letter writer.

Jensen has never had a case he could not solve before, but as his investigation into the identity of the letter writer begins it soon becomes clear that the directors of the publishers have their own secrets, not least the identity of the ‘Special Department’ on the thirty first floor; the only department not permitted to be evacuated after the bomb threat.

I nabbed a copy of this from a library book sale when I realised it had a sci-fi bent. It’s super short and I could probably zoom through it in a couple of hours, but we all know that’s probably not going to happen any time soon.

And 9 On Loan From the Library (That I Really Need to Read Before They Revoke My Membership)